


Freesia

by Molly_Ann



Series: Crash And Merge [3]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Light Angst, M/M, Mentioned Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-27 02:38:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9946496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Molly_Ann/pseuds/Molly_Ann
Summary: Bruce gets a phone call from a nemesis. Harvey needs help.





	

_Six Months Earlier..._

Harvey never liked journalists – despised them in fact. So when he’d become renown in Gotham city as the only justice fighter that didn’t wear a cape or a mask, it was a surprise to find one who wasn’t screaming his name, or asking him for an interview. She was the first to catch him leaving a juvie centre north of the police station – the very first to find him without a camera or a crew.

“So how does it feel to be the real Harvey Dent, huh?” She approached him, smoking a cigarette held between two un-manicured fingertips. He huffed a sigh, stopped and turned on his heel towards her. Cruelty wasn’t a trait of his.

“Wouldn’t you like to record this instead of... just asking me?” He piped up, not at all curious as he probably sounded. She stepped towards him, ginger curls bouncing, and let the cigarette drift down, crushing it with a toe of a faux-velvet boot.

“Call it more of a personal curiosity than a job.” Her voice was dark – and dry with smoke and tar. He nodded, and then it sat in his mind where it should.

“Oh. Oh, but of course...” He furrowed his eyebrows. Flirting with strangers wasn’t a trait of his either. But she looked kind of hot, and maybe he’d be doing our ozone a favour by helping her quit smoking. So maybe... “Heads, I’ll give you my number. Tails, I don’t.”

A grin widened on her face, eyes lighting like a child’s. “They all say you play to chance.” He flipped it, and as expected, it’s heads.

“I never leave anything to chance.” He handed her his card, the one that included his personal details, instead of professional – even though he was sure she’d be just as interested in the latter - and turned to leave.

“Don’t you want my name then, huh, pretty-boy?”

“You know mine, so I guess it’s only fair.” He walked away a little more, and didn’t even turn around when there was no response. Halfway across the juvie parking lot towards his car, there was a buzz in his pocket. Upon checking his phone, the corners of his lips turned up as if it were a reflex. A text from an unknown number, with just one word that he’d been anticipating since he left the front of the centre.

_Isabella ;)_

-

 

_Present_

The Joker feels like murder after sex- which is hardly surprising. He calls an enthusiastic Asphyxia from a payphone, who meets him in the city centre behind a dive. They find a business man exiting – one of the do-gooders - who honestly won’t stop babbling on about his wife and kids ( _‘And you expect me to care?!’),_ and drag him into a corner. Joker splits his face - just a little something for Batsy – and Asphyxia kisses it better, holding him down with shocking ease. They never stop talking about Bruce Wayne.

When she gets back to her flat, finally alone, Asphyxia weeps. She turns on the television, methodically strips and removes her smeared, running make-up avoiding the splits and bruises before settling into her bed. She turns the TV off hastily, narrowly escaping a GCPD interview. When she realises there is blood all over the clothes she’s packed to take to the cleaners tomorrow, she begins sobbing again. And even harder when she catches the bloodied make-up wipe she’d left half hanging out her bin. Her face still feels stained and dirty. And under her nails is cracked, dark burgundy.

-

Bruce pushes himself too hard. After years of self-discipline, strict training procedures and instructions rather than advice from his butler, Bruce has learnt his limits and not to push them. Or so he thought. His joints wheeze and groan as he steps into the shower, and when he leaves, his breath is ragged from the effort. Its midday and Bruce barely has the time to suavely cancel his date and reschedule a meeting before he crashes back into bed, uncaring of the freshly-made-treat-with-care sheets and falls asleep in his clothes like a child.

His dreams are as light as his days, and when he is awoken by Alfred in the evening, he recalls how morbid they were. He dreamt of falling, relaxed by the impeding completion of a destination, through soft sepia clouds and dulled mulled apple skies. His joints ache when he moves to get up, and he excuses himself to the restroom to take a hidden morphine tablet. He can afford to be doped up on his night off.

At night he allows himself a little time – time that he has none of nowadays – to relax. He goes to one of his rooms – the older room in the mansion, preserved with a log fire in the corner, and sits. He relaxes, and watches the flames lick up the brick wall behind, sipping a glass of whiskey. Until his phone rings, of course. He pulls the device from his back pocket.

The number is unknown. He lazily picks the call up, and answers as Bruce Wayne.

“So, I needed to get hold of you...” The nasal, pitched voice is questioning down the other end, and it’s dreadfully familiar. “But I didn’t have any gasoline...” The voice sounds almost remorseful. He tries very hard not to drop the phone.

“What do you want?” He replies as Batman, yet exasperatedly stops when he hears a sharp chuckle down the phone.

“Don’t pull that one on me, Brucie. It’s quite attractive, but... I know where you live...”

“Shut up!” Bruce snarls down the phone, and the Joker down the other end of the line bursts into a crescendo of giggles. He doesn’t even ask where he got the number – the semi-private number of Bruce Wayne is dotted around the city on payphones, street walls, old friends, girlfriends... Harvey’s old phone. He swallows, not allowing himself to think of the jacket, or the throbbing pain that comes with the memory of something before the Joker tainted it. “Just tell me what you want, or I will hang up and find you _fully dressed_.”

“Actually, that was what I was betting on.” The voice drawls out, a smacking of the lips and a girlish laughter muffled down the line. “You see, I’m quite the insatiable man... And now I know you are willing to indulge me.”

“I am not.” The Batman protests, as if Bruce had said it, it would have sounded indignant and petty. Another guffaw.

“Stop doing the voice already!” Joker chokes out. “I like it, but I d prefer... Hmm,” A contemplative noise, “My arm still hurts from watching you – hearing you – on television earlier. A press conference...”

“I am not doing this with you. Not over the phone, not ever.”

“Sure you are!” And Bruce nearly groans with grievance. The whole point of putting on the suit was all out of  a self-righteous do-good-ing attitude, but right now he is tempted to hang up, no matter how many lives are at stake if the madman gets bored, to make a point that Bruce does not live for Joker’s own amusement. “Hey, you won’t even think about me when I tell you why I’ve called.”

“So you didn’t just call to feed me cheap one-liners?” His own voice sounds more sarcastic than surprised. Bruce lays the phone down on the coffee table in front of him, puts it on loudspeaker and relaxes slightly, or tries to, taking another sip from his whiskey as another chuckle reaches out to him.

“As tempting as it is, no.” Her hears lips smacking, which is somewhat of a contemplative gesture for the madman when it isn’t one of danger and lust, blood or otherwise. “What I wanted to say was that, uh... How to put this?”

“If you’re going to piss me around I will hang up.”

The next part is high pitched and indignant. “Hey, I was thinking of how to phrase it so that you wouldn’t get too, uh... feisty with me. As I was saying, we had one of our all-encompassing criminal gatherings tonight, as we do. Poker, whores for those who’re into that kind of thing, I dunno, even a nightly brawl and a few sacrifices to the greater prosperity of Gotham dotted around. And so at a certain time, at a certain place, all of us who have affected Gotham greatly gather around and discuss the future like we can actually have sane and business-like conversations.”

“Get to the point, Joker. Unless you want me to interrupt one of these meetings.”

“Oh, bats, you couldn’t find it if you tried. And even if you did... I doubt you’d even be able to take all of us on at once.”

Bruce grunts at the truth of that statement in annoyance. It was true – if Gotham’s finest were in some kind of fragile, even fragile, partnership, Batman would struggle ineffably protecting himself from all their blows, let alone getting his own in. “Carry on with what you have to say, Joker. Or don’t. Fucking. Make me. Listen.” Bruce was finding it incredibly hard to relax now, grinding his teeth in something of frustration and swigging more than sipping from the glass he’d just refilled from his whiskey decanter again.  

“Ok, Ok fine. And so we had one. Not so long ago, maybe only about fifteen minutes or something. Hell, don’t listen to me I’m bad with time. And we’re all proposing ideas, y’know. Top secret stuff, it’s rather a mystery so don’t ask me what exactly. But sweet, sweet Mr. Dent argues his point that we should get to our said top secret end-goal through more political ways. Ex-DA and all, he would. But Bane...” Joker makes a tutting noise. And Bruce almost feels sick to his stomach to hear the Joker talking about men he’s strived to keep off the streets as if they were in some kind of clique-y friendship group. “Bane wants to use brute force and bone-crunching strength to get there. So they disagree. And it gets heated.”

Bruce takes a steady breath. Harvey couldn’t have stood a chance against the huge, swaying bulk of Bane on venom. Two-Face couldn’t either. “You see where this is going, right? Bane pumps himself up – and really I’m certainly not intimidated by it but Pam definitely was. Scare tactics, really. ‘Sphixia was even quaking in her boots, yet she’s never been fond of Bane anyway. But, still, Harvey stood his ground, until he took about two or three hits. Fought like a wild dog actually – kicking and snarling, but even he was put down.”

Bruce bites his lips, swirls the dark liquid around the glass. “Two-Face is dead?” A loud cackle comes from the phone – Bruce resists the urge to throw it across the room. Harvey really should have died to him years ago when he became the man he is now. There’s raw, yet dulled, pain at the feeling of someone lost. Bruce wishes he doesn’t have a redemption arc.

“No, silly. After thinking about how much he meant to you... How much he means to you, actually, Croc and I gave him a hand up and sent him on his way over. Figuring you could get him better medical attention without drawing too much attention to him if you get what I mean.”

Bruce stands up and snarls, almost crunches the glass in his fist. He grips the phone tight in his other hand, bringing the receiver to his ear. “I am not your fucking go-to for every fucking mess you leave in your path, understand?! You are not using my sentimentality to make the Batman do whatever you wish!”

A cackle, low and heightening pitch. “Yes I am Batsy. And I just figured... You’d want Harvey safe, even if he isn’t quite... Harvey?” Bruce wants to protest that he would like Two-Face secured, and not dead, inside Arkham’s Infirmary Ward, but the whole exercise seems pointless. It’s not like the clown would take any notice anyway.  He’ll now have to deal with Two-Face, who probably hasn’t been able to wait for his time to meet him as both Bruce Wayne and the Batman, half-dead stumbling over to the mansion. With Harvey’s current double personality, he couldn’t tell what either of them would make of him.

The man who was once a very good friend, a lover, and the man that couldn’t save him. Or, really, didn’t that apply to both of Bruce’s personas? Bruce could have saved Harvey from internal destruction, and hell, maybe even helped him relax a little at times. The closest Bruce had gotten to supporting him was usually, _“You don’t have to try and please me all the time, Harv,”_ and the amazing _“Relax, just focus on yourself. It’s my turn to make you feel good,”_ rumbling, slurred speeches that usually happened midway into the making love.

“Naughty, naughty Batsy. Are you ignoring me, putting on your suit or going for a trip down memory lane?” A cackle from the phone.

“Ignoring you.” A sly, witty billionaire smirk that tries to cover up the truth, but they both know it’s a re-direction.

“Oh, Brucie. I always know when you lie, especially to yourself.” The voice deepens towards the end. It’s attractive. It’s pathetic. “I’ll, uh... See you later. Probably on TV, or something before I come back for seconds.”

“If you think I am ever touching you, you must be as cra-“ And Bruce was going to angrily yell down the line about his hate for the clown and disgust at himself after the night on the roof, but the beep from the line signified that the clown had hung up, rendering that exercise pointless. Instead, he practically throws his phone on the armrest, and stands, hands sweeping down his face exasperatedly. He downs the rest of his glass, which he really shouldn’t do. This isn’t Batman’s night off anymore.

The Joker tends to signify people of an event about five seconds before the actual happening, and so Bruce is concerned that he doesn’t have time to put on the suit. Instead, he settles for a Kevlar vest, a model he picked up to keep Bruce Wayne safe instead of the Batman if it ever came to that, and the thickest pair of pants he can find. Dick is gone, and has no intention of returning immediately, Alfred is asleep, or rather it’s the time he retires, and so that is one issue he does not have to deal with. All he has to do is hope to God that if Joker’s little story is true, and a Bane-beaten Two-Face is on his way over, that he uses the front entrance opposed to the back.

And so Bruce waits. And instead of waiting more after five minutes by the com-locked doors of Wayne Manor, Bruce then gets an old gauntlet he still owns locked away in a secret room on the ground floor. If it’s all a con, he is half-prepared.  He makes it back to the main entrance, solid like stone even when the coms bell to inform him someone’s speaking from the main gate.

“Bruce? I know you’re here...” And by god, Two-Face’s usual groan sounds like _Harvey_ , and the tone in his voice, the shift of breathing and small whine sounds like Harvey in pain. Bruce takes a deep breath – the last contact he’s had like this was in the cloakrooms of Gotham’s central hall, during the fundraiser. Hidden, and rushed, and exhilarated, and Harvey was _begging_ in a different manner than he will be for Bruce to _let him in_ right now, but it feels remotely similar enough to make the man think. Since the accident, it’s all been beating fists and death-threats, and the lone coldness in Bruce’s heart at the tainting of a soul.

“He said... He said you would help me and.” He doesn’t finish – and Bruce hears a cough, wet and sharp, a spitting away from the coms. Blood in the lungs, or in the mouth. If only he were there to assess the damage, to make sure he isn’t too damaged so he could send him to the Arkham ward or just _something_. God he could be dying, and Bruce... Bruce won’t stay and do nothing.

He presses on his end of the com. “Tell me the damage.” And oh, god, that was the Batman’s voice. He hadn’t intended it to come out that harsh, but –

“I.. I think two of my ribs are broken, my left ankle... I can’t put weight on it. Oh, god, the blood...”

Bruce sighs and opens the front gates with a flick of his wrist. It’s going to be a long night.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I'm not sure whether I'm going to continue with this series after having fallout with some of Gotham's finest. Pam and Harvey will always have a place in my heart, but Joker and Harley? I have lost faith in almost completely. If I do continue with this series, the whole batjokes sexual tension will probably end up being blown out of the way by the appearance and death of Jason Todd. Advice would be appreciated! x


End file.
